Scrapbook E (Part II)

Scrapbook

William Gilmore Simms's collection of scrapbooks represents one
of the most significant, but least accessible, resources for the study of the writer.
Housed as a part of the Charles Carroll Simms collection in the South
Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina, there are nine volumes
of scrapbooks, each comprised of works of numerous genres from throughout
Simms's career.[1]
While the majority of the included works are Simms's own, the scrapbooks also
features writings by others, as well as works of uncertain authorship. Prior to
digitizing these volumes, access to them and their scholarly possibilities was
exceptionally limited. Interested researchers would need to travel to the South
Caroliniana Library, and, before the publication of John C. Guild's Simms: A
Literary Life in 1992,
these volumes, like the Charles Carroll Simms collection generally, were
off-limits to all but a select group of scholars. As these works provide a wealth
of information for researchers interested both in Simms and nineteenth-century political
and literary culture, the work of creating digital surrogates for this
significant collection meets an important scholarly need, and adds another
level of archival depth to the Simms project.

While there are a significant number of manuscripts, as well
as a small number of illustrations and maps, in the scrapbooks, the vast
majority of the items found there are clippings from newspapers and
periodicals, many of which Simms was involved in editing. Simms's lifelong
habit of supplying anonymous or pseudonymous contributions to the nation’s
periodicals is documented throughout the scrapbooks. As a result, the
scrapbooks provided one of the chief resources for James E. Kibler's efforts in
two of his significant works of Simms scholarship: Pseudonymous Publications
of William Gilmore Simms (1976)
and The Poetry of William Gilmore Simms: An Introduction and
Bibliography (1979).

Kibler’s work is one of the few significant scholarly uses
of the scrapbooks to this point, and his commentary about these collections,
while brief, is useful in orienting new researchers to them. In the appendix to The Poetry, Kibler states that “Simms did not use the scrapbooks as
a record of place of publication but rather as a collection of poems from which
he could select pieces for future publication,” and further notes that there is
“no firm chronological demarcation between the scrapbooks” (Kibler 461). What is true for the poems is similarly true
for the other works contained in the scrapbooks. With the exception of Scrapbook F Part 2, there appears to be little effort by Simms to
systematically organize the contents of any of these volumes. There is also evidence of haphazardness in
their construction, with items pasted on top of others, works pasted in upside-down,
remnants of torn-out items, and whole pages ripped out. Further, there is no substantial evidence — either
internal to the scrapbooks, in biographical accounts of Simms, or in the
writer’s copious correspondence — that provides insights into Simms’s process
in creating the scrapbooks. The original
covers of some of the scrapbooks feature a large capital letter — A, B, etc. —
but seeing these as an ostensible identifier is problematic. It is difficult to ascertain when Simms put each
scrapbook together, or even if he finished one before moving onto another.[2]

As such, one would be remiss to interpret these volumes as
systematic presentations of Simms’s work.
Rather, these works, as a whole, are an essential artifact of the nineteenth-century
Anglo-American cultural and intellectual world.
Simms’s contributions to the literary life of this world are well-known,
and in these volumes the pattern of his robust imagination shines. His concerns, aesthetic thinking, and
artistic plans are on display. The
scrapbooks reveal the evolution of many of Simms’s significant works,
especially poems, as both manuscripts and printed versions, often marked up in
the writer’s hand, are present. Beyond
tracing Simms’s artistic thought and development, the scrapbooks are full of
book reviews, essays, and various works not by Simms, showing the author’s
broad interests and providing researchers with a broad picture of intellectual
life on both sides of the Atlantic. Beyond
predictable interests in agriculture and domestic politics, Simms also has collected
works about a large range of issues, including European colonial policy,
international trade, science, medicine, and many others. These volumes are, thus, of potential value
to a large set of scholars, not just those interested in Simms’s literary efforts.

In approaching the scrapbooks, researchers should bear in
mind several considerations about the content of the books themselves and their
digital processing. Some very general
statements can be made of the organization of the books: Scrapbook A primarily consists of early poetry, while Scrapbook B is full of poems from
throughout Simms’s career. Scrapbook C is a post-Civil War
collection, and features poems, editorials, and essays. Scrapbook
D is made up mostly of poems from the 1840s-60s. The preservation process has resulted in scrapbooks
E and F being divided into two parts.
Both parts of Scrapbook E are
filled mostly with book reviews, newspaper-published correspondence, travel
narratives, and various other prose works.
The two parts of Scrapbook F are
significantly different from each other.
Part 1 is mostly poetry, while
Part 2 consists almost exclusively of
book reviews and editorial sections from periodicals Simms edited, especially The Magnolia and the Southern Literary Journal.[3]Scrapbook
G features a mix of travelogues and other prose pieces, as well as many of
Simms’s final poems.

Researchers should also be aware of the conventions we
utilized in our digital processing of the scrapbooks. In many cases, items appearing in the
scrapbooks have lacked clear titles. In
these cases, we have supplied a title for the sake of clarity and
reference. Supplied titles appear in
[brackets]. Further, we have sometimes
found it necessary to give extra bibliographic descriptions as a part of an
item’s title; these descriptions are given in (parentheses). In situations where materials are not dated,
but where a scholar, like Kibler, has supplied a date, we have listed this date
in [brackets]. In situations where
clippings are not dated, but where we have been able to locate the source of
the clipping’s publication, we have listed the publication date of the
clipping’s source. While some of the
materials in the scrapbooks have clearly not
been penned by Simms, many unsigned pieces are almost certainly by him. Nevertheless, we have taken a conservative
approach attributing authorship to these unsigned pieces.

W. Matthew J. Simmons

[1] A
tenth volume, identified in the catalog as Scrapbook
H, appears to have been assembled by Simms's family after the author's
death, as evidenced by the obituaries at the book's opening. As Simms seemingly
had no part in assembling this book, it has not been digitized.

[2]
With the exception of Scrapbook F Part 2
and Scrapbook G, all other scrapbooks
have been through a modern preservation process. Scrapbooks A, B, and D include the original
covers and other errata in an additional file folder inside that volume’s
protective clamshell.

[3]
Somewhat confusingly, Kibler’s Poetry
lists all poems occurring in Scrapbook F
Part 1 as being from Scrapbook G.